Oh, you don't even know! Last week I was writing a review, which I hadn't saved in a while. I was using Word as usual, and at one point I was writing about Windows 8. Except, typing quickly I accidentally hit the CTRL key instead of SHIFT for the W. Guess what happens when you press CTRL+W followed by the "n" in Windows a split second later.Reply

PowerPC is still hanging around. Since Apple completed the Intel transition in 2006, several new PowerPC cores have been released. The PPC 476 for embedded use is one. The PowerPC A2 was at one time rumored to be the basis for next-gen consoles.

In a bit of irony, Apple bought PA-Semi which designed PowerPC chips in 2008. Those chips are still being sold by Apple generally due to military contracts. A few have landed into odd ball systems like Amigas.Reply

They're still around in the embedded market but that rarely generates headlines. IBM had let PowerPC be the low end brand and for the most part stopped developing PPC cores on their own initiative and focusing on custom parts.

The architecture is still making news under the POWER title though. The POWER7+ chip at 5 Ghz tops Intel's best server efforts.Reply

Well, a laptop that offers 4 DIMM slots, a single high end GPU configuration, 2 mSATA slots, 2 2.5" hd slots, and a high end CPU suggests a certain weight class that may not be size-appropriate for something smaller.

That said, < 8lbs is pretty good for a computer with this many options.Reply

I like that thin is in and it is the new chic, but I also think there is a place for bigger laptops. I'm glad someone's still catering to that market. I mean, I'd kill right now for a laptop with 4 DIMM's, a high end video, 2 mSATA and 2 SATA ports. That it's got a matte screen is awesome, too.

Thing for me is I'd wait for Haswell at this point. It's just got way too many advantages that will directly translate to laptops. It'd boost battery life, it'd cool the whole thing down, it'd offer superior performance, it'd offer better use of idle states...

It's just too incredible for mobility PC's. Even for giant laptops would benefit from superior battery life and less heat with more performance. Plus, the future proofing would be great. I mean, look how long the basic architecture underlying Sandy Bridge (through Ivy Bridge with its mostly similar layout) has lasted because of the lack of real AMD competition and the slowdown of the tick-tock cadence.

Now imagine how long the Haswell tech will last you if the rate of slowing continues apace. As long as you don't want minor improvements to the CPU with more major improvements to the iGPU, Haswell could last you through Broadwell and give you a long future of improvements via Intel drivers for the underlying motherboard, etc.Reply

Stop dual HDD/SSD RAID 0 configurations in notebooks please, it just seems and is quite stupid to me. It wastes space, offers no benefit adds insecurity and it's better with just a large mSATA or 2.5" SSD or mSATA SSD plus a 2.5" HDD if you need the storage, use the space for other uses like slimming the computer down, larger battery, better gpu, cooling or whatever. Or just replace the ODD with a multibay solution of you really need to offer lots of drives.Reply